


Perdition Catch My Soul

by SassafrassRex (Serbajean)



Series: Purchased, Traded, Wagered, Won [5]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abusive relationship POV of the abuser, Catatonia, Fond poetical references to training and operant conditioning, Haggar's kinda complicated, Operant conditioning with continuous and discontinuous scheduling, She's also a mendacious depraved profoundly amoral monster, can be both, unprompted auto-mutilation (not the same as premeditated auto-injury), whoa look the word 'paladin'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-11
Updated: 2017-01-19
Packaged: 2018-09-07 23:38:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8820856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serbajean/pseuds/SassafrassRex
Summary: -but I do love thee. And when I love thee not…Maybe she deserves the way he burned her for trusting him too far. But she'll make him sorry for it.She'll make him sorry.ORJust what were Shiro’s captors doing, while he had his renaissance and left them behind? What happened when he escaped?Direct sequel to All-Pervading Corruption, but can easily be read alone.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In essence, Haggar’s POV, circa another fic, [All-Pervading Corruption.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8262385/chapters/18930283) If APC was the catalyst, here's the fallout.  
> Do you need to have read that? Well... nah. Do I quote it and other previous fics, for callback purposes? Yes, yes I do. But that’s about all. A few allusions, and echoing phraseology. No more.  
> On that note:the end! Kinda. This smallish twoshot is technically the last of my tiny series, and damnitall, it is going up before season 2, no matter what! (... Though I happily reserve the right to more ‘day in the life’ stuff, stuck in the middle of it... good thing, since two such pieces are half-written already).  
> 

 

 

 

“What are you—Stop that, what are you doing?”

There was a hole at the corner of his mouth, running red down his chin. Too slowly, he canted his head in her direction.

What in the name of—he’d…

He stared vacantly before rolling his head back. He’d chewed through his lip. Through it, until blood and rust drooled down his face. How disgusting. And of all the stupid, puerile—why?

She hopped up to her feet and strode over, fists swinging by her sides. He knelt exactly as she had left him at the beginning of her meditations. Exactly as she had left him, save for his having quietly gnawed a hole into himself.

She could have pressed a fingertip through it, just what was he thinking?

Little surprise, he offered no answer. Sharply, she yanked him up, brought his face near hers.

“What is this?” Witless automutilation, but did he even notice?

He blinked slowly. Like he had no worldly _idea_ what had upset her. And he started chewing again.

Haggar drew back a fist. The filthy little animal, if he thought that—

Dark eyes glittered, suddenly strange. For just the barest, tiniest instant, she felt threatened.

* * *

It was the work and failure of many, many, many days that lead to that point. But from the very beginning, he was always a trial.

The bright little alien she swept up from the arena. Always, he put her at odds with herself over how she ought to handle him. How much would be too much. Too little.

Loyalty, she knows, is not so difficult to instill. Unthinking obedience, immediate acquiescence. Given agony in one hand and ecstasy in the other, a soul—any soul—can be rewritten. Pain enough to bend, delight enough to break, and a skillful eye to dispense both. All minds will snap like his did (splintered under her own tender care, though she didn’t let him see).

And once broken, then reformed.

His failing earned him rebuke (hideous in ways he had not imagined). His success brought him reward (euphoria he couldn’t defend against). As reliable and predictable as food sates hunger, drink quenches thirst. Ongoing enforcement. Efficacious, to be sure. 

But it is also terribly fragile. Loyalty attained through continuity—if it can be called _easy_ to inspire, then it is easier to lose. If food ceases to fill him, the eater stops eating. If drink leaves him dry, then he stops drinking. The child built upon too reliable a rule is _vulnerable_. He could appears perfect, until the cracking of his too-stiff foundation leaves him bereft. She has seen this happen too many times. Conditioning unravels, lessons crumble. The eater stops eating, the child stops listening.

But the gambler.

The gambler endures. Returns again and again. The gambler is loyal, _however_ often his idol may spit in his face. Success or failure, he always returns, and he always gives _._ And gives and gives and offers up, until he has rusted out to nothing.

As to her own, he was a child when she found him. By unwavering commitment, she wore him clean. By her unfailing attentiveness—as certain as food satisfies and drink sates—he learned obedience. He learned her rules and he learned to rely on them.

But her ambition demanded more. She didn't want him to  _need._  Not in the way that he needed to eat, drink, and sleep at night. No, because rules can break, and the drinker will stop trying to drink, once he learns it won't help him.

She didn't want him to  _need,_ she wanted him to  _crave._ Else his loyalty could up and vanish, the first instant she violated his expectations.

She needed the empty child, for a canvas.

But she wanted the gambler.

So, she gambled with him.

The one thing known to increase all odds is time. She gave herself more of it. In his first days, when he'd crumbled (when he reached for her, begging) he'd laid his mind open. And with an established way into his head, she stretched his days and nights long. She orchestrated his dreams, she could change the dimensions of every lesson she taught him. Set them all deep, so he wouldn’t buck them off.

She could punish him when he _didn’t_ deserve it. She could spare him when he’d earned enmity. Retrain his wonderful mind to _think,_ instead of just to react. Let him learn to crave. Meticulously, she could cultivate her dearest little terror into something wiser and wilier.

(And make him to shine. Just as she promised.)

It was a risky choice, on her part. She took her chances with his resilience, for it is quite taxing on a soul, to be beyond its world. Taxing on a body, to tread outside its sphere.

But she was a gambler, just like she wanted for him. She understood odds, she understood balance (she had been playing these games for over ten thousand years). She understood the temptation to push _too_ hard and too fast.

And he was strong enough—remarkably so, or she would not have chosen him—to bear up under it. She made a point to let him touch true sleep when possible. During the night, when he was restored; true sleep, unharried by her instrumentation. And yet, even in that he found the means to excel—for what a surprise and what a _delight_ it was, to hear what dreams he uncovered all on his own.

For a time, there was little about him that was not a delight.

* * *

“I turned away and see here, you’re thriving. Just to spite me.”

_Just what have you been doing?_

If only she could have known.

* * *

_Damnable reprobate. Not yet ready._

_He will be. There is time._

It became her mantra.

Just as she thought him immortal, he would stumble. Just as she began to despair, he would stand up and remind her. Unwittingly perhaps, he would tease and coax her into trusting him again, for the sake of his bright future.

And he _was_ improving. All-beyond bless him, he was.

Ever-patient, she watched him grow strong,she weaned him up, feeding him lessons; challenges. Opponents and monsters, both living and of her own creation (it would never do for him to forget the smell of real blood, forget the crunch of real bone; she kept it with him at all times). He advanced and progressed, until he outsmarted striking shadows and outpaced her own fleeting thoughts.

What a wonder he would be, if she could ever see him finished. She _would_ see it. She would teach him, he would learn, and he would _keep_ learning. And then he would shine and shine until the day he hollowed and burned out. She swore this would be so.

(Many times, she would curse herself and her willingness to rationalize.)

When she deemed his progress adequate, she brought him back to the arena. Demonstrated him to the masses, boasting of what she'd formed out of their missing victor. Such a triumph, that day. When the emperor lifted his eyes from the ring and met hers, her grin stretched to split her face. The affect of smugness was (of course) _quite_ beneath her… but it was a vice she relearned, where it concerned her Champion.

That memory would still make her smile, long after.

When she wrung her hands and released him on his first assignment, she wasn’t boasting then. Watching him disappear, it left her in such a state of disquiet, that the weight of it manifested. And her attendants, her underlings, everyone around her suddenly fell prey to a curiously unexplainable illness.

Some of them dropped dead. Others wasted away slowly. All the while, she agonized over his return.

But then return he did. Successful; shining splendid. And the fools she’d sent to linger on their deathbeds, they found themselves revitalized and invigorated like never before in their trivial lives. _Wake up,_ she bade them. _Stand up, see this. See what I’ve made._

She’d promised him she would raise him to radiance.

When he burned her that final time, she wondered how could she have misunderstood so terribly.

* * *

She found him in the midst of his sabotage. So stunned was she that she could do little more than stare. He’d turned on her. More completely than he’d ever dared to. Ever.

Something inside her shriveled at the sight. _All_ her time with him, all her _work_ with him. And yet when properly incited, he was undone. Reduced again to a child, with all of a child’s wants and weaknesses—spritely, fleeting notions about his self, his home, his losses, his freedoms. Foolish things, for him to outgrow and abandon (she’d _thought_ he had abandoned it already).

She watched him kneeling, rocking some creature she’d never met. He didn’t notice her at all. The _false_ , faithless little tramp, he didn’t even see her. Bitterness flared up, hot enough to unstick her feet from the floor.

She stepped forward and she made him pay for it. Like he must have known she would do, and _why_ hadn’t that stopped him?

A haze dropped over her eyes and she wanted only to kill him. She wanted to make him scream until his mouth tore and his lungs bled. Capricious, untrustworthy, disloyal, let him see what that earned him. Truly, she wanted to, for all that she knew that wasn’t the right way. This wouldn’t— _couldn’t—_ be his escape. Vile as he was, he still owed her more than just a death.

She knew these things, but she was horrified. She was reeling; the only thought in her head was to reset what he’d undone before it fell all to ruins. How did he manage this? He loved her, how could he?

(Loved her and made her compromise for him, and how he burned her with that.)

 _Do you notice now? Do you see?_ She battered him from every side, with that thrice-damned name that _still_ wouldn’t let go of him. How could he, how dare he? She pressed him for scream after scream, until his throat did bleed, between his lips and onto the floor. Her hands peeled his skin away in strips, and her magicks assaulted his mind until he went lax and wouldn’t open his eyes for her.

She should have stopped. But _what_ was she going to do with him?

 _Do you see now?_ All that she’d done for his sake, the myriad ways she’d preserved him. All that she had given. Did he see her? Eyes sealed shut, did he see, did he—

The quiet was startling. She stood all alone, mystified as to what had been her purpose. The air cleared and she saw him lying so still.

So very, very still.

_Don’t you dare_

And she was beset upon again. Curses, oaths, orders, all manner of useless words tumbled out of her mouth as she gathered him and shook him hard.

 _No. Don’t_.

She made a mad grab for his fluttering quintessence, pumped it in her hands (like she’d had to pump his heart early on, before she’d learned how far was too far). She did this until she made him start breathing again. He didn’t want to, she had to dig her way through _such_ darkness, just to reach him. But she did, she made him breathe. And she made him keep at it, until he finally began to do it on his own.

After _all_ this, if she had killed him? If she’d pushed him further than she could draw him back? Haggar watched him breathe on his own and her face twisted with ugly sentiments she no longer dared name. 

He needed to be more mindful. Stop making her do this, it wasn’t good for him. She would take better care.

Holding him there so, so close, she hadn’t predicted what came next.

* * *

—That he simply might not recover.

That he would finally stop standing himself up again.

He’d go off his food, and she would look in his eyes and see nothing _._

It didn’t make sense. How often had she watched him fight? How often had he smashed through the challenges she placed before him? He prevailed, he _always_ prevailed. 

And he woke, didn’t he? Yes, she had hurt him, but he woke back up after only days. Surely, that meant he was well. She’d expected him to wake up and look at her with resentment. She was prepared for fear, and for mistrust.

She wasn’t prepared for apathy. He surprised her when he wouldn’t eat. And after nearly losing him, she hadn’t the heart to force it.

Though, when he persisted, her forbearance ran low. She decided that he was doing it to unbalance her. The needle-toothed wretch was _malingering._ Waiting on her first misstep to further whatever new scheme he’d contrived. But she’d compromised too much for him already. Let him try—let him starve, let him wallow, let him make a spectacle—he’d see no change in her. She acknowledged his behavior not a wit.

But seventeen days had passed, since he woke. Seventeen days, and he hadn’t yet stopped. He’d grown worse, not better. When she put him to work… it was as though he were sleepwalking. Every morning, he’d grown quieter and quieter. He only spoke when bade to.

His sharp, clever eyes had grown so dull.

She used to understand him so well. How had he become such a mystery?

It was a brutally cold realization, that she _had_ not given this issue the attention she should have. Blithely oblivious (and too grateful to just have him breathing and awake) she had allowed her Champion to atrophy, right in front of her eyes.

Much too late, she stormed into his cell. Yanked his head up by a fistful of hair and jammed two probing fingers at his eyes. But when she tried to search him, she only saw darkness. Inscrutable, impassable.

It made no sense. She gnashed her teeth, he should not have been able to do this. He didn’t have the strength; he _hadn’t_ had it, since the day he’d first bent his neck and allowed her inside.

But that wasn’t true (it wasn’t true, because  _just what have you been doing?_ ) How long had this been growing in him?

Furious, she leaned on him heavier. But there were only shadows like pitch dark rolling mist. Secreting his mind away, they shut her out. _Hostile_. They seemed almost hostile.

She could have pushed harder. She had the power, she could have forced her way to him. But she did not dare. Not when he was already weak and not even if he weren’t. She had almost done that before, and it must have been her heedlessness that had caused all this mess.

Whatever _this mess_ truly was.

* * *

“Sire, I couldn’t.”

Leave?

No, how could she leave? He wasn’t well. Something in him was damaged (was rusted), but she didn’t yet know. She couldn’t be dragging him all over creation like this, and she couldn’t _leave_ him.

But Emperor Zarkon wouldn’t hear of it.

“Sire, forgive me. I overstep, but-”

“You will not overstep.”

“Sire-”

“Haggar.” Her emperor’s face sank into an unfamiliar look (unfamiliar to _her_ , because he had never had cause to be disappointed with Haggar. Never).

“Sire, I promised him to you. The greatest weapon in your empire, I gave you my word.” _Let me build him for you._

_Do you doubt?_

_Do you no longer believe me?_

Shame weighed so heavily. Bright-eyed like a fool, she had pledged to her master a peerless asset. A gift for her empire, like she hadn’t given in centuries.

But what had she to offer?

A manic, doleful beast who turned his back time and time and _time after time again whatever was she going to do with him?_

She’d made such promises. She had abandoned so much of her station, for the sake of this pursuit. How could she have expected Zarkon to keep indulging her?

Yet she knew, she knew it could be done. If she could just have more time… Oh but she sounded deluded, didn’t she? She sounded mad.

But she did, she _knew_. Her Champion transcended every estimate she’d ever had of him. A strong will and mind. Bright, unshakable quintessence, paired with the flesh and bone equipped to weaponize it.

But that same will and his mind, these things she loved about him, were the source of all her troubles. _Why now?_ How could she leave when it was so imperative that she stay?

She had promised. She’d promised herself. And her master.

She’d promised her Champion.

“These are your orders.” Her emperor needn’t indulge her like this. This was his own patience; he didn’t have to let her argue.

“He is unsound, I cannot leave.” How she humiliated herself.

“You fear for the needs of your asset. But your empire also has need of you. I will see you here.” He wouldn’t sabotage her, would he? Not her emperor, he was the one who  _gave_ this to her. “You will do this. Then you may return.”

As intimately as Haggar knew fury, she had never held it towards her master. And her rage flared up, white-hot like it would burst out from her mouth and her eyes and her hands… 

But she couldn’t hold it. Not for him. As fast as it came, it crumbled at her feet. “If I leave now, I may not recover the ground that I lose.” Her _Champion_ , how could she not see to this?

Her emperor paused. He understood, she knew he understood (he’d been with her for such a very, very long time).

But he did not relent. “If you could be spared, I would not have asked. You know this, Haggar.”

She knew. She understood duty. She understood service. _Right-thought._ She understood the pursuit of victory and honor for her empire.

“I will send an escort for you, two day cycles hence.”

Service. Always to her empire, she did not live for herself.

And she did not. She-…

She did not live for her ailing Champion, either.

“Yes, Sire.” With all due grace, she bowed her head, “Vrepit sa.”

* * *

All her effort.

It is fine and delicate work, to grow ability into achievement. _Potential_ into _actual._ But she was practiced. She stood by the finesse of her methods and the balance she struck between cruelty and refuge.

And yet somehow—she let herself into his cell and looked—could she have damaged him? Could she have hobbled him?

She did love his mind, yet could she have ruined it? “Whose are you?”

Fine tremors ran over his skin. He sat with his back to the wall. _Huddled_ ; he’d taken to doing that again (and after all the work she'd done, to make him stand upright and tall). He didn’t look up at her entrance. Rusted, his voice came, “Yours.”

When she reached down and lifted his head, his eyes were slow to meet hers. There remained a small, near-healed mark at the corner of his lower lip. She snarled at it. If he thought to try that again, she was going to have him gagged.

(Vague and bemused, drooling red, he had stared at her. As though _she_ were the mad one.)

It was enough that she’d finally taken his armor. Anything sharp or able to be sharpened. She’d set a lock on his hand. She should have done all these things earlier, she’d wasted too many days, closing her eyes to this. She hadn’t wanted to call it _crisis_ , any more than she’d wanted to whisper, _madness._

But he wasn’t eating. This morning he tried to refuse water. He couldn’t be trusted if left to himself. Empty-eyed and sallow-skinned, he didn’t hold his head up. He hardly ever stopped shaking.

He was a quandary. How to handle him?

When she opened her hands, he drew away without a word. He blinked once, and for the barest instant, she thought she glimpsed something _baleful_ in his eyes—

But her imagination only. There was just a blank, he didn’t even see her.

* * *

How maddening it was. If she told him to get up, he would (much too slowly, but he would). If she told him to fight, he would do that as well. But what use had she for an automaton (one already rusting)? A mindless slave was as loathsome as a simpering submissive as a dulled peon as a slobbering sycophant as a blunt weapon as a drudging golem as  _none of these was what she wanted_

None was what she wanted for him. She wanted a thinker. A fighter, a gambler. If he didn’t rally. If he didn’t conquer whatever mystery it was that saw him becoming so _worthless_ , then what could she do with him?

She held his face in her hands. He didn’t lean into it. He didn’t cringe away. He just stared. And she searched his features for anything to help her understand.

Points of black, ringed with gray, ringed with white. The same eyes as always, when at rest. The same eyes and the same sharp bones, shaping the plains and contours of his face. Richly dark hair, but for a shock of brilliant white that turned and didn’t recover. Barely visible lines of light winked at the corners and edges of him. Glowing under his skin, they faintly threaded across his face. Her own sign, all right where she had left it.

She looked, and looked closer still.

And then, sudden enough to startle, the picture shifted into place. Pieces fit to a whole; too many symptoms built a syndrome.

Cheeks _too_ sharp.

Jaw too set.

Lovely, shaded eyes, but emptied past empty, and turned resolute.

Without another word, she fled. The door hissed shut and she strode away, raging. So preoccupied was she that when rounding a corner, some fool nearly ran headlong into her. And she didn't even spare the focus to kill it. Stepping fast, her teeth ground together and her fists spasmed. That look on his face, she knew it. Emptied but further. Edged. Thinned. Resolved. She had seen it in soldiers. Far more than that, she had seen it in slaves. And in animals, beasts of burden. When they refused their feed (she should have _watched_ him). When they laid themselves down, and then refused to rise, no matter how they were beaten.

Damn him. Her shoulders rose and knotted. Yes, she knew it. She’d seen this look on many, many faces (she’d put it there herself). And she wanted it _gone._ It was not to be tolerated, she didn’t want it anywhere near her own. Her _Champion_ wore this face and she could not fathom why.

Only that she’d punished him and he hadn’t recovered. He was growing worse. All of him, somehow growing worse, not better.

And she was about to leave him alone.

 

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask how little sleep.  
> Also this is essentially No Greater Heaven's bookend/mirror/what-have-you. You /may/ want to give that just a little glance, if you haven't before.

 

 

Time slipped.

If her singing was gentler, if her hands were softer, he didn’t ask her why. If she whispered strength into his bones though he wasn’t due (and wouldn’t be for many, many days), he didn’t ask why.

If she did that, instead of providing him the enteral support she had planned to. And found other makework for herself, which would keep him close to her.

If she pressed harder at his mind than perhaps she should have. If she held him tighter.

He didn’t ask why.

All she could see of him was dark.

* * *

His keepers had orders to make him eat, however they had to. She’d taken his armor. She stood with him, trying to use every scrap of time she had.

“Whose are you?”

“Yours.” Nothing wrong with it.

“What are you to me?”

“Your Champion.” No inflection, but that wasn’t strange for him.

“Will I ever leave you alone?”

“Never.”

Nothing untoward, nothing wrong.

Dissatisfaction thrummed under her skin. “When I return-"

She saw it, _she saw it there_ the way it flared up in him before he could hide it. Baleful, menacing, and she _knew_ she hadn’t imagined. She saw it and she heard it, like a growling under her feet, pitch dark like empty space between stars like _he would reach for her with both hands and—_

And nothing. He looked as dim and stupid as he had before.

As he had for _days_ now.

To drive her insane, was that his latest mischief? Had he always been so willful?

 _Had he always been so willful…_ Would the day ever dawn when she could finally lay that question to rest? Haggar clenched her fists. He sat so quietly, one wouldn’t ever guess. So unassuming as to rob all credence from the treason he had committed against her.

Voice rusted, eyes vacant. “‘When?’” Elbows folded on his knees, perfectly harmless.

“I am gone for a time.” She could hope only days.

“Then-”

“Be quiet, child.” That word dropped out of her mouth without her consent. He wasn’t supposed to be that any longer. She wanted him stronger, why did she say that?

“Be still, until I return.”  _And I_ will _return. Do not think yourself pardoned. Don’t move, do not even breathe._ Her voice was calm but she raged at the thought of leaving him so half-finished like this.

His eyes rolled up to hers. He was rather an unsettling sight, wasn't he? Any other might have taken one look at the sharp planes of his face and the crooked slump of his back, and recognized malady. Would have seen the sick shine of his eyes, and at once known him deranged. A creature rendered terminally unsound _. Fading,_ and profoundly unpredictable.

Another might have known to tread wide and leave him alone.

Haggar clouted him in the eye, smartly knocking his head against the wall. The movement was swift, sharp; was reproach, was a warning. Was the model of how she _always_ dealt with his insolence (and she paid no heed to the way his face _didn’t_ twist; the way he didn’t flinch, didn’t shy from it). 

“Are you not mine? Have I not taken you to myself; have I not said?” _Promised_ was what she’d done. A thousand times, she’d promised.

She didn’t understand why he was like this; how he could have learned so well, but then fallen so far. Why he’d gifted her with the most beautiful days she’d seen in centuries, yet he now lingered like a brute condemned.

She’d searched him. For days, she’d done nothing but search him. Watching his eyes turn dimmer as he refused his food. Days spent frustrated, infuriated; flinging herself against the black walls surrounding him and _why_ couldn’t she understand?

 _Enduring walls._ That should have been her work, not his. Be he trapped like prey or hiding like a coward, neither suited him any better than the other. Neither shamed her any less.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” More words she hadn’t intended. More of her fool mouth running away, she didn’t want him seeing her so discomfited. He never had before. Anger, she would show to him. Pride, joy in his progress; he was allowed to see that. Smirking care and lovingkindness; she had _drowned_ his feeble heart with these. Filled it up to bloating and bursting, lest he ever think to take it back.

But he’d never seen her at a loss. Not like this. At his most rebellious, he’d never once managed to confound her like he now did so effortlessly.

 _Effortlessly_. Indeed, it had only taken the undermining of her labors, the dislodging of lessons set so deep he never should have _felt_ them, much less sloughed them off. It had only taken his betrayal, it had only taken senseless fasting, and the sealing of his thoughts (and she couldn’t abide not knowing how). 

Oh yes, _effortless_. Her mind felt loose and slippery, and she almost laughed. Perhaps she owed him acknowledgement. Perhaps congratulations—well done, his madness left her truly bewildered.

And she was to leave him like this? Leave this soulsick, hemorrhaging wreck, and hope that he would _wait_? Tie him down and hope that his mind wouldn’t flee further?

 _But flee to where?_ There is nowhere to turn. He had no one. Hadn't that been the point? The original lynchpin. He had first turned to her because he'd had _no one_ else.

And he didn’t, she knew that he didn’t. That trifling little creature of his, whatever it had been, was long gone. She knew he had no one else. Only her.

She thought of him, shivering alone, wrapped in the dark that she still couldn’t cross.

(She ought to have paid that dark better mind.)

Leave him? No, she would not do it. All her work, all her effort; she wasn’t leaving, just to have her investment sink deeper into his own untethered subversion. Hang what had been asked of her, she wasn’t—but no, of course she was. _Don’t be a fool._

Her feet were loud against the floor. Her steps never made noise when she walked, yet here, the sound echoed.

He made himself such a trial. Why did he make her hurt him? How flimsy was her work that she’d had to reestablish her hold on him, again and again? That his faith in her could be so threatened? He loved her.

Reaching out, she wrapped a hand over his eyes (resolutely ignored the lifeless way his head lolled on his neck) and focused again. She spread out a thousand long fingers, blindly probing through the dark. As with every time before, they met those walls, and they curled up and fell back on themselves. She could push him harder… But to do so was to lean on an obelisk spun out of glass. He would shatter, long before she could make him move.  _Why_ couldn’t she find him?

She drew her twitching hands back and gripped her own arms instead.

But perhaps his delirium was just that. A delirium. She tried to reason, perhaps he’d pushed himself too far. He was such a fool. Perhaps he'd starved himself into a delirium, and wasn’t listening to her. She found that preferable.

(Rationalizing. But how could she know that he had found others to listen to?)

“Do you doubt? Do you no longer believe me?” Did anyone? Anyone at all? Her master thought her mad. Her Champion thought—

There was blood on her fingers. Her own- her own claws were-… This was _not_ supposed to be. It wasn’t right, she was better than this. It was she who spun _him_ about and left him blinking and stumbling.

Of its own volition, her hand sprang to life and she knocked him across his cell. He flopped down, head jammed sideways. A broken, failed experiment that she couldn’t stand to admit. Her very own, now a stranger who tried to hide himself from her.

“How dare you?” Her voice was a hiss. “Cretinous,” she kicked him once, “Deathbound,” and again, “Staring up like that!” 

Not a sound out of him. Three inelegant times, her foot met his gut, his back met the wall, but his face barely flickered. The lack of response almost made her kick him again _. How dare he?_ Stare up at her with some void in his eyes, and try to _frighten her_ with it _._ He would have her think him deadened, useless. “But I know better. Your mind could be crumbling all around you, and you’d still use every falling scrap against me.” She knew it, she knew him.

But wasn’t he supposed to love her?

A blank slate, he stared straight up. As though she were the mad one, and maybe she was. She’d kept him, hadn’t she?

“Have I not promised?” She gripped his throat and wrenched him up off the floor.

See here. See her Champion, this dull-eyed, lamentable tragedy. Used up and all emptied out, but for fleeting apparitions of strange malevolence. A crouching spectre of sharp-toothed enmity, like _nothing_ that had ever belonged to him.

(She knew it was there. She _ought_ to have paid it better mind.)

She let him drop. “Damn you, have I not promised?”

 _What_ hadn’t she given him? What had she ever asked in return? Strong and bright and hers, that was all she'd asked. But she’d compromised. She could see it and it made her sick. _Compromised,_ given favor, drawn too close. She could lose him to that, she _never_ should have loved him.

Panic dug in like hooks along her spine, once more, she pressed her will against his. _Let me in, let me in, **let me-**_

Only darkness, deep and foreboding. She didn’t fear the dark, her Champion did. This didn't make sense. Ever since she'd first set it upon him, he _hated_ darkness. How did he harbor this? How did _it_ harbor him, how long had he been hiding behind it and she’d not known? 

It didn't make sense. Did she know him at all?

Confounded her, so he had. Haggar's mouth opened and her laughter was a wash of acid. His every untoward deed, every crime piled up before her eyes, and she was shocked to see such a mountain. She couldn’t trust him, she couldn’t leave. When was the last time she'd been so frightened?

_Lying so still and he didn’t want to breathe._

His fault again. Always.

_Shouting, crying out when a blow laid his back wide open and sent him crashing to the floor._

His fault. It was always his doing; she’d been too infatuated to see. Too caught up in limerence and prospect, she’d been blind. He made her–… He made her _believe_ that he—

Something rose in her throat. Like hatred, but no, she _knew_ hatred. This swelled until it choked her, some expanding, exudative sickness that clotted thick in her lungs. She didn’t know it; she’d never felt its like. It made her head spin, like she might drop where she stood.

She had not loved him wisely. It was true. She should have known better than to think that he wouldn't make her regret every scrap of affection she afforded him. Had he only listened, he could have been her greatest success. But he never listened _,_ he _never listened_ and she had let him. And he was her own treacherous failure for she had _not_ loved him wisely.

And he did not love her.

(How could she have ever thought that he did?)

“Mine.” She couldn't recognize the sound of her own voice. “My Champion.” Was that small noise her? Did _her_ hands shake by her sides?

One long, mountain-settling sigh and he finally picked his own head up. She’d found him out. Tattered and fading, he’d tried to hide away in the dark. He _wasn't_ hers, was he? She'd found him out.

In ten thousand years of life, Haggar had been made to beg. In ten thousand years, of course she had. But not in ages, and not ever before she’d exhausted all other avenues, even to the ruin of everything around her. She hated it, she reviled it. She _wouldn’t._

But here she stood. 

“Mine.”

He looked over at her one last time. Slowly, ever so quietly, he smiled. Softer and sadder, and his head shook back and forth. She’d found him out, but he no longer cared.

It was the same smile he gave when he burned through skin. It was as familiar to her as the prowling menace was foreign. It appeared on his face when he lopped off limbs and sliced open viscera; it heralded an ending to things. Gentle, inexorable, _finished._ And he let her see it because he wasn’t afraid anymore.

Then his eyes shuttered again. Then moribund resignation swallowed him back up and turned him gray.

_Don’t._

None but the gamblers know the true sting of loss. Of loss courted, earned. Of loss deserved.

Haggar had always been a gambler. An irredeemable fantast, with her own vainglorious ideas about who and what he could be for her.

No.

 _No_.

This could not be borne. This would not be endured.

No _no,_ her Champion, no one else’s. She had come much, much too far.

Thwarted too many times, she admitted defeat and she dove at him. He thought she would kill him, he thought he was freed?

Fool. She clapped her hands to either side of his unresisting head, and dragged him up high so he hung, skewered right through his mind. So much work, and still just a child _._ To have come through all of this with him—to have him _refuse_ her yet again

The mask of his face wavered, and his hands (the hand she’d _built for him)_ shot up and tried to push her away.

 _Spiteful, malicious, unworthy—_ it would not be endured. He wouldn’t hide anymore. She would no longer punish or prod or batter (or any of these things meant to teach him and shape him, but that netted her _nothing_ at the end) _._

“Need you proof? Have it then!” She’d been patient long enough. 

Once more, she put his name to work for her. Wove it among shrieking, ringing words; sang so it echoed like the screech of nails. If the obelisk should shatter, then let it shatter, he wouldn’t hide from her anymore. Her spell surged forward, and his mouth opened wide, keening like a thing driven past endurance.

Her ringing words chewed through his brain like locusts and beetles. Crawled about like worms, sifting, eating, wriggling through every barrier he had cowered behind. They tilled, they exhumed, until all the dark cleared away, and she could _see_ the weave of him,  unobstructed. A tapestry of shining threads; a tangled nest of sparking wires. Everything he’d done, seen, been, learned, lived. All of him, stitching and twisting together; the numinous cords of self and soul and memory.

In her mind’s eye, she beheld him like once she had beheld the universe.

And of this shining, sparking tangle of wirework and synapse, she gathered a fistful, and she _yanked._

Some threads snapped. Many of them (such potential lost; damage to him that would never be undone).

But did not give. They strained and stretched between her self and his. She drew these threads out, and the stitching pulled tight. The fabric buckled and formed him into a new shape.

These fragments of his soul—this raw, straining tether—she held close _._ And he would not be whole again, except by her leave.

Whatsoever he did, he would feel her eyes. Whomever he became, he would always be lost. He would _never_ escape. If he should flee ten thousand lightyears and never speak her name again, he would not escape.

He was twitching and jerking like a marionette. She wondered if perhaps she should have just made him one, to begin with.

Her song climbed higher and the sound of her voice doubled and redoubled itself, echoing all around. Perhaps her ambitions had always been doomed. She'd gambled on building a gambler and look here at what became of it. _She_ was more thoroughly addicted than he was. She was the one scrambling to keep hold of him while he strung her along, and danced out of her reach. _Champion,_ she called him. What nonsense _._ No, he was a whore. He was a whore, and _she_ was the fool who chased.

But no longer, she'd paid for him already.

He spasmed and he kicked, and she realized he was screaming. Enough to hear, even over her own song and crackling power. Violet lights splashed across his face and gaping mouth and she could hear him, could _feel_ him screaming.

He’d not screamed so loud and so long since the days before he was hers. However she might have punished him, his soul had never buckled like this since he'd first belonged to her. She’d never let anyone damage him so badly.

No one, no one, _no one_ ill-used her Champion. Haggar had always protected him.

But he screamed, so let him scream. She had protected him too well anyway. Her Champion, a whore; unlearned, intractable, ungrateful. She'd given him more than he could have ever dreamt. Made him to shine. Now he didn't want to be hers?

Well.

Well, she hadn't asked him.

 _Take back everything you ever gave me._ He had pleaded to be rid of it. More than once, he’d offered it back, as though it were meaningless.

_Take more._

“I put strength and swiftness to you. Like you could _never_ attain on your own.” She set the song in place, even as she spoke over it, straight into him so she knew he heard. “Power, I can give to anyone but I gave it to _you_. Of all of them, I thought you could hold it.”

She’d had such hopes.

“Someone of my own.” _To step beyond the failing flesh and the weak heart._

He just screamed.

_Leave me nothing._

“Everything you have, I gave you. I would have made you deathless.”

Strength, she’d fostered. Dexterity and endurance; she would have made him the greatest weapon of the empire. And she tore it up, partitioned it away. Until he was a weak, little alien, no more remarkable than when she had found him. And these gaping empty spaces left behind, she packed them up with wrath and rage and livid weeping that went unnoticed.

 _Toss you down into the dark,_ she’d threatened.

_Until you’re mine again and mine forever._

She hoarded away her small share of him. Bridled it, though it fluttered. She whorled the reins around herself and grafted their ends tightly together.

(But she was angry. She was frightened. And in her tempest, she forgot that she _must_ also leash herself back to him in kind.)

She watched his eyes dim and felt his fingers loosen and slip from her wrists. She didn't stop. She hadn’t wanted to do this. He’d forced her hand. This wasn’t the right way. This was coarse and crude and senseless, and she didn’t want this. 

But she was losing him and she _could not_ lose him _._

When the deed was done, she opened her hands and he slid boneless to the floor. She stepped back, and the room swam when he dropped into the seat of her mind. Ten thousand years she had stood, yet the weight of him made her stagger

When her vision cleared she stood alone in the quiet. Mystified again, as to her purpose.

But the horrid morning broke, and there he lay sprawled at her feet. Her breathing quickened (she hadn’t… she shouldn’t have…) before she ripped her germinating regret up by the roots and flung it away. She hadn’t had a choice. 

Robbed as he was, he would never be quite what she’d once hoped. Hobbled, he could not reach the heights she’d imagined. Even should he recover, even should she work with him day and night and day and night, even should he advance to become the strongest warrior in centuries—she’d burnt out a piece of his horizon and that would not grow back. Her eyes drew down to his right hand. She’d built it for him. She’d made him so much stronger, all in pursuit of a goal she'd just sacrificed. Forfeit, in the effort to salvage what she could of him, her own worthless calamity.

She’d attacked—fettered, violated, warped, but she’d had no choice and he _deserved_ it—relatively little. Yes, she'd filled the spaces with love and loathing, and everything else she’d tried to offer him. All of it, naught but refuse now. Weighty burdens for him to carry when he woke. Which he would.

But her hands shook. The bright future she’d just thrown out, all the lofty prospects she’d just trampled over, and yet it _still_ might not be all that she lost today. Because it is taxing on a soul,

 _—to be rent open._ If she had taken too much then her Champion would live out his days as an empty, vegetative husk. Inert and completely comatose, for it is a very sharp edge, between _hers_ and _ruined_.

No, he would wake, he would wake in a day or so. Stubborn fool, he would. This was his fault to begin with. His own fault, she would grapple it no further. Her hands stung as she formed them again into fists (open wounds on her palms, her blood and his). But the guilty shaking, she banished away.

She looked again, and saw that the glow about him was gone. The meshwork of lights that glittered at his corners and edges, and marked him as hers (she'd woven it herself and wrapped it over his shoulders; a gift, of a kind). She had not meant to take that. But under her onslaught it was disassembled and despoiled and, surely enough, it was gone. Searching closer, she drew a whisper over his mind. And the frustration grew so intolerable that she thought about shrieking and just rending him apart.

Because the black was still there. After so much effort, excising so much of him. Her _own_ sign had been forfeit, but somehow the black remained. Quieted. Subdued, whatever it was, but still invading, still enduring.

(She’d been doomed from the start.)

Failure weighed so heavy, she dropped down next to him. Her own, her disaster. She ran her fingers over the weeping wounds she'd drilled into his temples. Found the energy to seal them up, with nary a scar. She took care of him didn't she? How had it devolved to this? How could anything of hers have come to be so wretched?

She rewove the lock, to place on his right hand. She was tired, but it would have to suffice. And his armor, she'd already taken. Anything sharp or able to be sharpened. So then let him be. Let him be, until her return.

And when she _did_ return… she would correct this. Somehow. She’d take the time. She would study it, she would study him (she had _been_ studying him, hadn’t she?) Uncover wherever it had all caught and tangled, and adjust however was merited. She would do better. Whatever he needed, she could give it to him.

What hadn’t she given him?

He lay still. Her quiet hands tilted his head toward her, and his half-open eyes accused, like once they had always seemed to do.

“You'll forgive me,” she brushed them closed and climbed back to her feet. She never thought she would do this to him.

“See if you don’t.”

She hadn’t wanted to. Ungrateful wretch. She should have never told—

Should never have told him—never loved him, never _promised him_ —anything at all. Stupid.

Stupid.

* * *

Twenty-three days later—when her heart pounded like it would wrench its way from her chest; when she gasped aloud and abandoned her work, to come tearing back to him—her Champion was already gone.

Stars trembled, and space rattled under her grief, until Zarkon himself came to quiet her.

She'd built a gambler after all.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Confound that sneaky, half-crazy sonuva--  
> (Go Team Shiro!)  
> To readers (especially you silent ones) I pose a question: Bonus chapter Y/N? Specifically, bonus chapter in the form of Haggar POV during a... certain scene, in a certain VLD season finale (you know the one). The best part of writing prequel stuff is then going back to the original and seeing how well you have/haven't done, synching up with it. Right? Or maybe not? Lemme know. It exists in my brain, which is likely good enough for me. But could also probably get it out in time for Jan 20th. *Shrugging*  
> If not, then this is done! Smallish twoshot to wrap for season 2. *Cheers* Season 2!
> 
> EDIT: OKAY! Cool. One more chapter definitely. It'll be up by Wednesday I think.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this ready to be posted? Eh... not entirely no.  
> But rl says it's happening anyway.  
> 

 

She searches. No longer for the escaped prisoner 117-9875. She’s hunting something greater. Crystals wink and hum at her, she’s looking for a phantom. A legend that sprung up into sight, then disappeared so fast as to challenge belief.

She searches for a Lion.

She kneels quietly, hands pressed to the floor. At no point does she recall the myriad times she brought him here.

Bright quintessence swirls around her, white, purple. She’s so tired her bones ache.

She isn’t looking but she sees him anyway. Just a hint, too faint to parse a location. But not faint enough to ignore (that will always be the way of it now).

And _blue._

It startles her into a gasp and a snarl. The Blue Lion. The Blue Lion, which had appeared as though from a myth. All this time, hidden on the very same alien backwater that the prisoner fled to.

It had shown for an instant, harassed one of the ships, then disappeared into a wormhole. But now she has it. And… something else. Something she hasn’t felt in millennia.

This is remarkable. This is cause for excitement.

She’s so very tired. The hunch of her back is deep and her feet drag. “Sire.” She walks slowly. “The Blue Lion has returned. And now I feel a resurgence of Altean energy.”

The emperor tenses. “Alfor’s daughter lives. How?”

“I know not.” Cause for excitement. She ought to pull the slump out of her shoulders and straighten her spine.

“But it is time to reclaim what is rightfully ours.”

* * *

 

_What did you hear?_

_Whispered, but it was like shouting._

_And what did you see?_

_Just dark._

_Bear with me, my love._

She startles back into her own skin, hands reaching. She’ll correct it. Whatever it was, she will. Just _hold_ , let him _wait,_ she can—

He isn’t here.

“Mine,” she whispers. Her bones ache and her joints crawl and nothing makes it stop. She grasps her elbows, nails digging as she sinks back to her contemplations.

“Mine mine mine mine”

* * *

Many pieces hang in the air. Darting back and forth, they school together and then affix themselves into shapes and designs known only to her. They make a mirror (like the one she’d tasked him with building. In the hopes of teaching him—but did he ever learn that lesson? She remembers he failed it many times, but had he learned it in the end? She can’t remember. She shouldn’t be thinking about him). She uses it when the crystals become inhospitable, when building the mandala grows too taxing. It is less powerful; she cannot use it to reach as far or as wide, but right now she doesn’t need to. 

Right now, her focus is narrow. The backwater, Arus. Home to a race of _filthy,_ grinning, sky-worshipping savages. Not worth a second glance, not ever worth conquering. Arus now houses something else.

To _see_ Voltron returned. The Guardian of Altea, the Defender of all things stagnant and staid, rising up from the dust like something out of stories half-forgotten. Haggar’s fists clench and the mirror sprouts a crack.

He belongs to her master. He belongs to the Galra. Yet the hated warrior stands. She never though she would live to see it.

And at the head, behind his eyes—

The crack widens as all the pieces shudder.

He’s not coming back.

He’s not.

Her Champion, at the head of Voltron. Her Champion rides the Black Lion. Her _emperor’s_ Lion. Her emperor’s false, deceitful Lion. And the missing prisoner. Traitors both. Fitting, a pair of needle-toothed betrayers.

Her Champion rides the Black Lion. Her Champion – her _emperor’s_ Lion – her –

The mirror shatters and the school becomes a swarm.

* * *

She stands, watching a condemned commander struggle between two sentries. For abandoning his mission, the fool deserves no less. She’s already forgotten his name.

 _Weakness is an infection._ Her master knows this. Would that she had remembered it herself. Weakness, favor, _compromise;_ it is an infection. She watches the doomed man kick and squirm. He courted this fate. He earned it.

How terribly it aches. Under her bones. She scratches at her skin but it never helps. She wants him near her, but he’s long gone.

Listening while the emperor condemn his servant, she marvels at her own foolishness. She oughtn’t to have tried. Should never have built so tall, and now she’s alone again.

But no, she is not, for Zarkon speaks beside her, “What have you and your druids come up with, to capture Voltron?”

Her regrets are her own, for her to wrangle back, so she sets her teeth and speaks past them. They aren't fit to be shown to her emperor. “I have been working on perfecting something.” Something ugly. Crude. Her Champion was elegance but it’s her own fault he’s gone.

And she decides this is better anyways. She will stand with her emperor. Just the two of them. For ten thousand years, it has always been the two of them. “Something that will strike fear into the hearts of any that stand against it.”

She’d promised Zarkon much, though he hadn’t asked for it. She had promised and then failed.

All she has ever built have been monsters.

* * *

Shiro wonders if the others know.

If it slipped to them, through Voltron, during the earliest times. It’s so close in there that their minds are all bumped right up against each other, jostling for room. Maybe he accidentally let something slip without knowing. Maybe that’s the problem. It could explain the looks they give him.

It could explain why Lance doesn’t approach him like he does the others. Lance is one of the most tactile people here, but not with Shiro. Probably the closest Shiro’s ever been to him, Lance was passed out, maybe dying. 

The most physical contact he ever had with Hunk all happened within the first two days of meeting him (and it happened predominantly in the form of hiding). Hunk backed off after that, maybe this is why.

Keith and Pidge don’t ever shy from him, and Shiro’s grateful. But some days he can barely look at Pidge without seeing Matt. And he still hasn’t talked with Keith about… anything. Any of the _myriad_ things he needs to talk to Keith about.

Maybe they know.

Shiro smiles, he encourages, he tries to set them at ease as much as he can. It’s not a problem. If they do know, and that’s the reason they shy, it’s not a problem.

If he’s being honest with himself, it’s probably a good thing. They’re cautious. He shouldn’t be complaining just because he’s a little skin-hungry.

Which is probably all this is. Probably. The tingling, the _chewing._  The tugging. If he didn’t know better he’d call it that.

It's not an _itch,_ no. No, that's not what it is at all. It's just… it's like there's something he needs to get at. But his skin's in the way. Something he really needs to attend to, but there's no means of access, and if he could just get the skin out of the way-

It was there when he woke up in Keith’s shack. It was there when Garrison medtechs were shining lights in his face. And it was worse then. In that brief time before he had his Lion, it was worse. So bad he could barely think. Teeth gnawing around, underneath his bones. He knows it’s gotten better, since having the Black with him. Nowadays, as long as he's awake, it's almost faint enough to ignore.

But not gone. It’s still lingering. In his limbs, in his _brain_. Pidge hugged him once, and he nearly jumped out of his skin. It’s a strange feeling, but Shiro can ignore it if he tries. Yes, when he’s awake, he can ignore it. Though, sometimes when he gets up in the morning, there’s skin and copper both caked on his fingers. Remnants of his not being aware to stop himself.

Fishooks wedged into his joints, and how _else_ is he supposed to try to get them out? 

These aren't thoughts that make any sense. Shiro's aware of that, and most of the time, he doesn't permit himself to have them. As long as the proverbial sun is up, he goes through his day, he does his work, he doesn't spare it a glance. He would swear he really can ignore it.

It's fine. He wakes up each morning, and if there happens to be blood on his fingers, he just cleans it off. 

It's just something else he's learned to live with. 

But sometimes—just sometimes, not even often—it’ll flare up even during the day. It’ll come forward, and it's the strangest feeling when it does. To be honest, it feels the same as when he’s about to remember something. That’s what it’s like. Like there’s something coming, still just out of sight but he knows it’s barreling forward like it'll hit him so hard he’ll rip right out of his own mind.

But then nothing happens.

It never makes landfall, like it’s too heavy to cross the full stretch. And then he’s left with no memory and just a knotting between his bones that he can’t get rid of. Useless. Frustrating, more than anything else.

However and whatever he might try (and he does), the only times he ever truly remembers are when he sees something. Or hears or smells something. Or thinks some certain sequence of thoughts. Triggers, but there’s no rhyme or reason to them that he’s uncovered.

And then at night, if he doesn’t wake up scratching, he wakes up screaming. That’s when his lost time circles the closest. It’s time that belongs to _him,_ but all he has are handfuls of seconds that wake him up terrified, flailing around and thinking he’s trapped. They roll him right out of bed onto the floor and his eyes jerk open, to vomit splashed on the backs of his hands and he’s crawling, chasing after _what_   _he doesn’t know_

Maybe the others know.

He wishes someone would tell him.

* * *

 _Blood dripped off his face, to land on the floor next to his fist. His eyes, he kept respectfully pointed downwards. Quiet (though not timid), he explained his failing. There were people on this ship who didn’t like him. Who didn’t trust him. He tried to stay out of their way, but that wasn’t always possible. He hadn’t attacked anyone. He wasn’t badly damaged. He had not—he had_ not _—_ _attacked any Galra._

_He looked a mess._

_“Little tragedy,” she bent down and turned his head left then right, taking in the blood and bruises, and noting them_ pathetic _. “You think I would take you to me, then forbid you from defending yourself? Why would I stake a claim, then let others trample it?”_

_He said nothing, kept his eyes averted as she brought her hand to his hair._

_“They are none of mine. You have always—” she tugged until he lifted his head and looked at her “—always had leave to do what you will with them.”_

_She smiled at the suspicion on his face. The discoloration along his jaw turned his pale skin dark. Like a Galra’s almost, and she chuckled at the sight._

_“Tall, aren’t they?” Her hand on him was commiseration. “They stare over your head and think to march right over your back.”_

_She jabbed at the bruise on his cheek. “Don’t you let them. Go and find them right now. Correct this.” She saw his shoulders straighten out. A glimmer of viciousness lit up his eye, but only just a glimmer._

_No more than that._ _It always took a great deal to rouse this one to retaliation; her Champion was a pragmatist. H_ _e preferred a proper reason, before he suffered himself to act, and spite held very little sway over him._

_(She always enjoyed how very strange he was. She, who would burn a man where he stood for speaking to her out of turn.)_

_“Correct this,” she insisted again. They had insulted her. They’d laid hands on her Champion, thinking that that they_ could _. “Kill them if you choose,” though she knew he likely wouldn’t. He rarely seemed to take as much delight in doing so (perhaps it would just be one of his life-long flaws)._

 _“You are small. You are an alien. You are from the ring. They object to all of this. But you are mine, so you give them_ nothing _.”_

_Her smile stretched, and turned mocking. “You think I do any different?” After all, she stood the smallest and the slightest and the darkest in every room she entered._

_With a fist in his hair, she gave his head a light shake. “Do not let this happen again.”_

_The next time she saw him with a new bruise on his face, he had blood on his hands to match._

_In his early days, she’d had to silence those who doubted. Far better that he had learned to do it himself._

 

***

Haggar shakes the thought off. What a fool he’d been. She’d thought him sensible, but he was just spineless. She scratches at her arms and walks onward.

Everything he ever did had been motivated by his own ignoble fears. No ambition ever moved him, no plans, no aspirations. Nothing but his fears.

Save for when he was disobeying. Haggar's lip curls back from her teeth. Then he found all the courage he needed. She forces her hands back down by her sides before slinking between her attendants. She’d though spite had no hold on him but in fact, he was _built_ of it. Spite and fear, she honestly should have seen it.

Doors slide open in front of her. Beyond them, the very first voice he had silenced himself. Even before she knew him.

Technically, this one pleaded mercy from the Champion, and has been trying to regain his standing ever since. That isn’t what happened. Myzax would never plead mercy, not for anything. Least of all his own life. But he hadn't needed to, it had been given without thought. Without regard for propriety.

And with the crowd screaming, already in love with their newest victor, it wouldn’t have been wise to turn around and throw that victor into fetters over such a trifle.

It’s such a shame, she thinks. Regrettable that her Champion failed her in the end. Standing in the dark, Haggar looks up at gleaming yellow eyes. “I think I have the opportunity you’ve been waiting for.”

So, for propriety’s sake, it had been decreed: a new victor. Myzax had begged mercy, and he left the ring disgraced.

“How would you like to get your revenge against the Champion?”

Such a shame. But ultimately, she affords it little concern. She is no longer bothered by her failure. 

Haggar encloses Myzax in a sarcophagus of metal, draped with cables. A sarcophagus, or perhaps better, a chrysalis. Quietly, she raises both hands, and then she watches his eyes bulge as everything in him is stripped away.

She only gives them form and breath by loving them.

She’s so angry she can barely manage it.

And then Voltron kills it anyway.

* * *

He gave to them. He can’t be certain of anything, but that he gave. Shiro remembers so little, but even in the middle of the day, surrounded by the warmth of all the others, he still knows that he did.

At night his dreams run wild through his head until he wakes up clawing and reaching… and then they vanish. He forgets. But that they vanish doesn't help him, when he's wide awake and ripping training drones apart, one after the next after the next, until the rest of the castle finally wakes up. Forgetting it doesn't help him, because it only told him things he already knows to be true.

He fought for them. Showed his teeth and he entertained them. He jumped through hoops and lopped off heads and he _murdered_ for them.

He knows he did.

* * *

Haggar sits in a sulk.

It wasn't long before she discovered her error. A bond unfinished is useful for naught but courting madness and feeding torment. She’d been so concerned with linking him to her, with bridling him, lashing him down, that she’d forgotten herself. Half a bond is not a bond at all. To take is to give is to take is to give, it cannot be done by halves.

Such is the way with all her works. Giving and taking. _We give of ourselves, and the worlds reach back,_  it is the first lesson she ever learned. So long ago, she can’t remember who taught it to her.

Her skin is a mess of scabs and scratches.

She sits. She sulks. Damnation, but there’s not any better word for it. She ought to be meditating. Instead she stews and nurses her hurts like a child (acknowledging it just makes her angrier). She needs to be meditating, she’s been so tired.

She is often tired now, it happens more easily. Hardly surprising when she's playing host to a tether unfinished. Constantly, it stains outward into the dark, trying to make itself complete. She can’t break it without him present.

And if he _were_ present, she wouldn’t care to break it anyway. No. If she ever gets her hands on him, she’ll cut his heart out. She’ll shut his eyes and she’ll stop up his lungs. And she’ll cut it right out.

She chuckles low. See how well he torments her then. See how well this leash can tug when there’s no weight at the other end of it.

How he must hate her. He likely feels this crawling, this _reaching_ as well. But he is so much less than she. He is a weak little alien. Remarkable that the Black Lion could choose him as he is. Remarkable that there’s still enough of him left to be chosen.

If she lays hands on him again, she’ll correct this. There won’t be anything left then.

* * *

Time passes and maybe they don’t know.

Maybe it wouldn't matter if they did.

Shiro thinks they don’t, when he wanders into the dining hall at ass o’ clock in the morning CAT (Castle Arbitrary Time) to find all four wide-awake, elbow deep in goo, and their response to his entrance is to unceremoniously draft his help.

It’s a rarity that they ever get any leave. But they have, and they’ve chosen to spend it staying up all night, making… he doesn’t catch the particulars of what’s actually being made, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

A bowl of goo is shoved into his arms (it's red; why is it red?), along with some spoons, and Shiro is solemnly tasked with _measuring_. Hunk smiles, and then grabs Shiro around the middle, bodily maneuvering him into a chair, to get to work. And Shiro thinks perhaps they don't know. Perhaps things are alright.

He wonders it some more, when they’re in the dining hall again only a few days later. Lingering after dinner, Lance and Hunk have been wandering in and out, cleaning up. It's late, Shiro’s got his arms crossed in front of him, to keep from scratching, though it isn't late enough for when it usually starts acting up. The day was long and his stomach’s full and he’s starting to get pleasantly sleepy.

Slipping lower in his chair by the minute, he almost misses it when Pidge speaks up from her place in front of him, sat cross-legged on top of the table. She spouts off a long string of syllables, ending in “flux capacitor.”

Lance sidles up and leans his (unduly sharp) elbow on Shiro’s shoulder. “Your what hurts?”

Which could mean Lance genuinely missed that reference, it being too old. Or it could mean Lance is taking the piss.

Kind of odd that Shiro’s allowed to find that familiar now. Or maybe it isn’t. Slumping a little further, Shiro rests his head against Lance’s upper arm. Kind of odd that Lance lets him do that (or maybe it isn’t either). It's nice, not being shrugged off.

Days keep passing.

In time, he forgets to keep wondering. After they finally get rid of the Galra crystal, Shiro’s heading on his way to check on Allura. But he’s a mess. Jumping at every shadow, and under his sleeve, his skin is raw. Appearing out of nowhere, Keith sidelines him and talks him into sparring. Shiro doesn’t wonder.

They trust him then. Maybe they don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t matter if they did.

* * *

“Haggar has my trust.” Every world weighs heavy. Every word, just for her. She’d failed him, but he speaks every word for her.

Her master, who'd held her in place when last she flew apart. Who remained with her until things again made sense. Her emperor, who bade her to drag herself up from her uselessness and again be the Witch. He is her oldest friend.

She won’t fail him again. She won’t ever stray.

These are auspicious days now. The Altean godwarrior has returned to wage war with the Galra. Zarkon had placed his hand on Haggar's shoulder and asked her for monsters.

She gave them. She will keep on giving them, until they succeed. She studies, she researches, she advances every day. She is stronger than she has been in years, she does not scratch at her skin any longer.

Her Komar experiment has finally flourished. The Altean warrior will fall, and it will be her doing. Just as it ought to be, just as it was before

Yes, these are auspicious days. The ruling power of the universe, jolted from complacency. A steady, leisurely expansion shocked into action. Into industry. This is an _exciting_ time for the Galra Empire. It is an honor to be alive right now.

She stands beside the emperor, she offers counsel, and not once does she think of an empty place at her right.

* * *

It’s his own fault he can’t remember. He’s not the first human in history to repress memories, and that’s what this is. Every graduating class at the Garrison had taken Psych, he had too. There’s nothing unique here. Not about the way it comes back, or the way the way that it doesn’t. Or about the way it yanks him right out of the present, no matter how badly he needs it _not to._

It’s a problem. Sometimes it’s crippling. But it’s not unexpected. 

(He can’t explain the ones that _almost_ come back, only to drop like ten-ton weights and leave him reeling. With his bones being chewed and his joints full of thorns, and nothing else to show for it.)

The scratching, that’s all probably psychosomatic. The ache's real but it's still all his head. Nothing’s different, nothing’s been done to him.

Shiro catches sight of his reflection on the way out of his room, and he amends that to _almost nothing._

(And amends it further.)

* * *

She only builds monsters now. Only slaves. She won’t overreach again. In the dark, she can admit she has learned better.

Her arrogance earned her this. She built too tall. And it all crumbled under the weight of everything she had staked on him. All the devotion she had heaped on his head.

Her Champion didn’t leave her overnight. It had seemed that way, but Haggar’s not a fool. It had been growing. Since long before whatever galvanized him to action. It seems obvious now. Just how many times had he shamed her? Made her fight for him? How often had she had to lean on her master’s understanding?

All her failures had festered under his skin (for how long? How blind had she been?) before something lanced it open, exposed it to the air.

Exposed _him_ , for the shameful waste he always will be.

She’ll find him, and the rest of the paladins. Perhaps she’ll pluck him right out of that Lion. Send the Lion straight back to her master, where it belongs. And the paladin, well, no one has any use for the paladin, least of all her.

She only builds monsters now. Just like she always should have.

* * *

Keith and Lance make him laugh, when they aren’t making him pray for patience. Hunk doesn’t hide anymore (these days, if anything, he sometimes has to be held back). Pidge, once the worst team player out of all of them, has turned completely around. Shiro doesn’t have to worry about any of them. It’s… it’s really nice, to know they have each other’s backs (and his. They’ve surprised him).

Coran is nothing less than a blessing. Absolutely. And Allura. Without the princess, they’d all be adrift in the void. Everything else orbits around her, she's the pivot point and the needle (an opinionated, occasionally intrusive, irritating needle, and they’d be so lost without her).

It’s a good crew. It’s an amazing crew, Shiro doesn’t have any complaints. The Lions? He doesn’t even have words to describe the Lions. This team, they’re everything he could have hoped for. Shiro's proud of them, he  _doesn’t_ have any complaints.

Except for one. Privately, he has some doubts about the person they put in charge. The headcase with the honeycomb memory, who sees things that aren’t there. Who can’t sleep and who once nearly stuck a fork in his ear, just to get rid of the nighttime gnawing inside his skull.

(He wouldn’t have actually _done it_. Just some nights it… A lot of strange things were making sense. He'd looked down and it had just been there, in his hand.)

Shiro’s not an idiot. He’s the best person here for the job he’s doing. That’s just the truth. Doesn’t mean he couldn’t be doing it better.

But regardless of that, his team is remarkable. Their situation is still inherently hopeless (though thinking that way never helped anyone), but they're coming along. It’s _all_ coming along, with Coran in support, and the princess with their direction.

Which means that when Allura’s caught—when he lets her slip away and how could he let that happen?

Then they’re _lost._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 'A little 1000 word coda' was my plan.  
> ... Yeah, that worked... ...  
> ACTUAL coda is on the way


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HERE is the little coda... Short, sweet  
> Who even knows what that other chapter was, hehehe

 

He’s closer than he’s ever been since he first left. He’s on this same ship. Strange, to feel him here. Strange, to feel it so hollowed and halved. Better to have nothing at all, than this ache _._

Haggar pulls herself up to her feet, and goes out to greet him.

* * *

When he sees the right things, he remembers. That’s how it works. He remembers some situation or scene or instance. Something.

But she speaks and none of that happens. He doesn’t go away (like he knows he’s prone to doing, leaving the others all alone to cover for him). No flashes, no train of images, sounds, voices,  _pain_ , like he's accustomed to. Just the weight. And the gnawing. He does not remember meeting her. And he doesn't know if it's buried too deep, or if it's just _gone_ , or—

Or if he's even the one who buried it.

(He might have had help. He’s tried so hard to say nothing’s been done to him)

“So, Champion returns”

But he does know her. He looks at her face, and he didn't know it before but there's something inside him that's been  _searching_ for her. And it's as though the ground falls away and he's left in a void where all at once, there is only  _her._

She meets his eye, and he doesn't know what comes over him.

But whatever it is, it's rotted. Whatever it is that hooks under his breastbone and tries to drag him forward. It’s twisted, perverted, and he wants to raise a hand to her throat (has to be the right;  _just for her, it has to_ ) and burn her head from her shoulders.

Whatever it is, it growls its way up out of his chest and sends him running forward.

* * *

No lights, no winking meshwork, glowing at the edges of his eyes, the notch of his throat. No quiet, barely perceptible smile to greet her. No flash of fear, once so familiar.

The paladin looks at her like she’s a stranger. Like she was never anyone to him; he looks at her like she’s  _abhorrent_.

Nothing familiar in his face, nothing she remembers. Nothing, save for the slick, malignant rage she had last seen festering. It remains, just as nonsensical as it ever was.

He hisses and springs towards her, and she makes herself into many.

Laughing at him, while he chases phantoms, she gathers her power and leans her weight on his mind.

But she cannot not reach inside. In the final days before he fled, his mind was shut to her, and it is  _still_ shut. She cannot reach inside.

In those days, she hadn't tried to force it. Like a fool, she had feared to damage him, but see what her restraint gained her in the end. So she  _does_  lean harder. She seizes upon the half-formed ties to him. Upon all the damage she left behind, all the ragged edges that haven't healed (will never heal), and tries to draw herself inward.

Yet, these walls do not give. Thick and heavy and unyielding. Dark and smooth, reflecting her own force right back at her.

Seamless inky black and it is  _absurd,_  because they are stronger than anything any unmagicked little alien could  _ever_  have—

Black.

 _Black_. She is almost to slow, the next time his hand knifes towards her face.

So that’s what it had been. She cackles, watching him run. This whole time, draped around his thoughts (in place of herself. Wrapped around him where she should have been). But now thickened. Settled. More solid than it was before, during his last days when she looked at his mind and saw only a mist.

Black, hiding him from her. Even then, before he ever could have known. Aiding him, guarding him, even before he pledged himself to their cause.

It makes her laugh. It makes her  _laugh,_ she almost collapses with it.

His new guardian has set a lock on him? Thinks to hide him from her, deep in the darkness?

Well.

Well, she’s no Lion, but she’s been weaving the dark long enough. When he learned the fear of it, he learned from _her_.

She has no way inside his mind? So be it then. She won't need a way in when she rips his heart from his chest.

(See how well he makes himself to breathe after that. See how well he has  _ever_  managed, without her beside him.)

* * *

Outside, battle rages. Outside, her master entertains himself with the Red Lion.

She’s glad for his amusement. It gives her time to cultivate her own.

Because the truth is, she has been wanting this. She’s been waiting for this. At this time, her only remaining fear is that fog will shroud her like it has in the past, and she’ll come back to herself and see him already bled out on the floor. She would so hate to miss _any_ of this.

Blithe and manic, she cackles and sends power slicing through the air. Watches him twist and leap to evade it, she enjoys making him run.

Does he even recognize the millstone tied around his neck? He carries such a weight, the same as she. And yet, he looks stronger than she can ever remember seeing him. Eyes bright, color high. 

He's thrived without her. He’s thrived in spite of her.

She remembers dead eyes, dead eyes, days and days and days of it.  _Embittered,_ whispers its way up her back and settles like poison poured into her ears.  _Crippled._   _That_ is what he'd been when he was hers. _Weakness, worthlessness,_ the only tithes he'd offered.

To her, he gave nothing, in the end. But to the Lions of Voltron, he gives everything _._

All-beyond help her, she’ll  _kill him._

She can hear him panting as he steadily tires himself out. Let him. Let him fight until he rusts away, he owes her that much. At the very  _least_ , he has always owed her that much.

“I made you strong and this is how you repay me?”

Looking wild, he swings at her face but she catches it and sends him flying backwards. He slams hard against the floor, and she holds her breath, just so she can listen to the sound. Then her mouth twists and she hisses at him. If she can make him feel just a  _fraction_  of the blight he left behind—

“You could have been our greatest weapon.” He could have, he could have but he abandoned all of it. Why would he do that?  _Why would he do it?_  Damn him, for the black hole he opened up. Damn him, for the void that he should have filled. The role, and the future he could have had. All of it now torn down and debased, stinging like a fistful of gravel he’s flung into her eyes.

She hates the sight of him. Hates the burning indignation he forced her to shoulder, when her lofty wager came to nothing. Arching designs meant for him (for _him_ ), and all of them now smashed and scattered. He took everything _._

Reality yawns wide open around her fist, and warp energy floods out of the gap. She sends it racing towards him, whining and rending the air. With a will and single-mindedness that she'd once admired (then coveted, then _owned_ ) he evades each shot, sprinting at her like he’ll tear her to pieces. But she is his senior by a decamillenium, and she will always be wilier than he. She stretches an arm out to greet him, and fog swells up, to enshroud them both.

How often did she rein herself in for his sake?

(How often did his calm steady hers?)

How often did she stay her hand when he’d more than earned his end? She is Haggar Dreamthief and she will spare him no longer.

She catches his throat, plucks him right out of the air.

When the mist disperses, she shows him the skin he could have worn. Slips it on over her own, and grins up at him with his own face. She bears his sharpened teeth and she reminds him what he’s given up.

 _This_ might have her Champion.  _This_  strong right arm that he flails against. As strong as the Voltron paladin is weak (everything the paladin fears). He writhes and tugs at her fingers, too feeble to move her at all. He’s tired, she knows. His treachery has taken him away from her for too long. After all this time, he must be  _so_  very tired.

“Now,” she promises, “I will destroy you.”

She has no way into his mind, but she’ll drag him down nevertheless. And when she laughs, it is with his voice. The noise hurts her ears but she can’t stop. The Black Lion won’t help him here. Nothing will help him, nothing will hide him, not from her, who gave him everything he has. It was she who dropped him down into her hold and made him new. And swore none would ever take him from her.

She holds tight, and she brings shadow swirling upwards, thick and heavy and rotten. Dragged up from the deepest places she can reach, to force its way past his clenched teeth and slide down his throat.

Just as she did before, she drops him down into the dark. And as she did before, she weaves it into a monster. 

And she sets upon him.

* * *

She laughs and she laughs, she can’t stop. Cachinates into the black and her voice may swell to howling, but she lets it. She watches him slow and grow clumsy, she knows he’s flagging (she is tired also. Ever since she sewed that thrice-damned tether into place). But he’ll fight until he rusts out, that’s always been true of him.

He still moves well at least. No energy wasted, and no quarter given. Perhaps there's some consolation in that. Still her Champion.

( _No._ He’s  _not._ Not at all not ever he is no one andsoonhe’llbe _dead_. The paladin is nothing of hers.)

She watches him drag his hand through her torso. She watches him slice her head off. She watches his eyes turn wilder and wilder. How long before he joins in, laughing at this absurdity?

He turns around a hair too slow, and she strikes _._  Power leaps to him, digs its way down under his skin and _settles_ there. Light washes his face, frozen in shock. His stare goes blank, like he can’t understand what’s just happened to him.

Her grin hurts her face.

He arcs around the blow and crashes to the floor, groaning and gasping and  _finished_. Void take her, she’s imagined this, she's dreamt of it. Scorn _finally_ finally satisfied, she snarls,  “And now Champion, your time is over.”

At last, no more of this. Her master will have his Lion back, her empire will have Voltron. Things will be as they ought to, and she can finally be done here. Forget that she ever made this mistake, forget how she tried to build worth from worthlessness. 

Be rid of her disaster once and for all, and she can  _rest._ Finally.

He’s still struggling, still  _trying_  to get his arms and legs underneath him. But his actions are clumsy and yes, she has him now. He can’t even pick his head up and she—

She jerks back and abandons him on the floor, because there’s energy incoming, flaring white hot. She’s so tired, she barely raises a shield in time. The princess. That  _stupid_ Altean wretch, and another of her fool paladins. She ought to have known better than to try to leave her cell. She  _will_  know better, when Haggar crushes her head like a—

But she has to abandon that as well. Because there is the Black Paladin, back on his feet. Tall, wrathful, filling her vision and death written on his face, swinging his hand like he’ll cleave her in half

She tumbles back into realspace with a clatter.

Where is he? What, where is he? Where is— _no_

The princess. The Lions.

_Voltron_

They can’t be allowed to escape. They can’t. All this, it can’t be for naught. Why did she run, she has to get back. She's a fool, she didn't kill him, what was she thinking?

 _Dark, malevolent, like he would reach for her—_ and no part of it was the Lion. He had threatened her thus and he'd done it on his own.

And she is betrayed all over again. She steps through space but she's too distracted, too exhausted. Her spells waver and she drops back into existence too early.  _So_  exhausted; she's been tired for so long now. She shouldn’t have wasted her time. But so be it, she’ll run on her feet if she has to.

She hears an alarm. The barrier has dropped. How, she doesn’t know, but the containment field is  _down._

No no  _no_ he won’t escape. She'll kill him, he won’t escape. 

Finally, she reaches her scope and bell. She turns inward and digs deep. She scrapes and scrounges, everything she can find. Gives everything she has left, and gathers the magnified force that the universe reflects back. She feeds it forward and it weighs on the mechanism until the whole piece buckles, bent so that it will never function again after this.

Her face contorts, and with a screech she  _heaves_ the whole of it at the fleeing Altean castleship.

Just in time. She watches infection spread through the opened bridge. For just a breath, she sees corruption.

Then they’re gone. She stands in the quiet.

Mystified.

She did not kill him. Her shame, her failure, her defiled aberration, and she did not kill him. She can feel it where his soul remains hooked into her heart, a most familiar parasite. She had the chance. She failed, and her master,  _his Lion is gone._ Again. Gone again. Lion and paladin, betrayers both.

She failed to kill him but _no, let her not have failed._ Let her power seep into the bridge the Alteans opened, and let it tear them all to shreds. Her knees wobble and she flops down, chuckling. An unstable wormhole, see how they fare with that. See how well his Lion protects him now. She examines the dark red staining her fingertips and grins wide. Oh yes, see how he manages. She clenches her fist until the color sinks into her skin, and the tiny whisper of him sings in her mind. 

Let that be the last of him. Let him be dead, let him be gone. Let it shred the lot of them down to atoms, that she may never ever lay eyes on him again. See how well he can torment her, when he is rent apart, across the universe.

She giggles and scratches, until her skin opens up and weeps on the floor.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Falls over* Two (actually 3) entire fics’ worth of Black Lion hints and I FINALLY get to just straight-up say it!  
> The end! The end, you confounded fic series!
> 
> Also *Shakes fist* Bwahahahaaa! No catharsis here! No resolution here, the fucker slipped away!! And zero things are solved and nobody’s safe and--  
> Oh look, here comes season 2!  
> (1 day left!!)

**Author's Note:**

> Of course, I'm as much a review-whore as anybody. Even for (in a weird way almost especially for) the "Dude, that's shit" ones. ^_^  
> 


End file.
